Consume!

There are a few stories that can be told about this painting. I'll start with what an old lady said when she saw it at an exhibition. It was an early Sunday morning, the last day of the exhibition. When she got to "Consume!" I felt compelled to explain to her what my intention was when I painted it. She stopped me abruptly and said she would decide for herself. She looked the painting up and down and then turned to me and said: "The question is, who is eating who". Good answer. If you want to know why I did it, read on. If not, decide for yourself.

I was working in advertising and we had been working on a campaign for Castle Lager for several weeks. It started to feel like every second word that was spoken in the brainstorms, was "consumer". I started to form an image in my head of a creature that had no identity. It's sole purpose was to consume. Early drawings I did had the monster holding a television set with adverts running on it above its head, about to consume it. It then evolved into this. With the two figures, the image attained biblical proportions. The woman becomes the Whore of Babylon, riding the beast. She points you down a road that forks, but both the roads lead to pyramids with the all-seeing eye. You have a choice if you go down her road, but both lead to enslavement - hence the ominous black clouds in a red sky. Now you know...